street.
Although the pitons were wedged in the stone beside the window, as they
had been when he'd fired at Harris, the rope that had been attached to
one of them was gone.
Bollinger crawled onto the windowsill, leaned out much too far, peered
over the ledge. The woman's body should have been on the street below.
But there was no corpse. Nothing but the smooth sheen of fresh snow.
Dammit, she hadn't fallen! He hadn't shot the bitch after all!
Why wouldn't these people die?
Furious, he stumbled back into the room, out of the wind-whipped'snow.
He left the office and followed the corridor to the nearest stairwell.
Connie wished that she could rappel with her eyes closed. Balanced on
the side of the highrise, twenty-three stories above Lexington Avenue,
without a safety tether, she was unnerved by the scene.
Right hand behind.
Left hand in front.
Right hand to brake.
Left hand to guide.
Feet spread and planted firmly on the wall.
Repeating to herself all that Graham had taught her, she pushed away
from the building. And gasped. She felt as if she had taken a suicidal
leap.
As she swung out, she realized that she was clenching the rope too
tightly with her left hand. Left to guide. Right to brake. She
relaxed her grip on the rope in front of her and slid down a few feet
before braking.
She approached the building improperly. Her legs were not straight out
in front of her, and they weren't rigid enough. They buckled. She
twisted to the right, out of control, and struck the granite with her
shoulder. The impact was not great enough to break a bone, but it was
much too hard.
It dazed her, but she didn't let go of the rope. Got her feet against
the stone once more. Got into position. Shook her head to clear it.
Glanced to her left. Saw Graham three yards away on that side. Nodded
so he would know that she was all r. Then pushed outward. Pushed hard.
Slid down. Swung back. She didn't make any mistakes this time.
THEFAmoFFEm Grinning, Graham watched as Connie took a few more steps
down the stone. Her endurance and determination delighted him.
There really was some Nora Charles in her. And a hell of a lot of Nick
too.
When he saw that she had pretty much gotten the knack of rappelling-her
style was crude but adequate-he kicked away from the wall. He descended
farther than she did on each arc and reached the eighteenth floor ahead
of her.
He braced himself on the almost nonexistent window ledge. He smashed in
the two tall panes of glass and fixed a snap link to the metal center
post. When he had attached his safety tether to that carabiner, he
released the main line, pulled it free of the overhead anchor. He
caught the rope, tied it to the carabiner in front of him, and took up a
rappelling position.
Beside him, nine feet away, Connie was also ready to rappel.
He flung himself into space.
He was amazed not only at how well he remembered the skills and
techniques of a climber, but at how quickly the worst of his fear had
vanished. He was still afraid, but not unnaturally so. Necessity and
Connie's love had produced a miracle that no psychiatrist could have
matched.
He was beginning to think they might escape. His left arm ached where
the bullet had grazed it, and the fingers of that hand were stiff. The
pain in his bad leg had subsided to a continuous dull throb that made
him grit his teeth occasionally but which didn't interfere too much with
his rappelling.
in a couple of steps he reached the seventeenth floor.
in two more jumps he came to rest against the sixteenth-story window
ledge-where Frank Bollinger had decided to set up an ambush.
The window was closed. However, the drapes had been drawn back.
One desk lamp glowed dimly in the office.
Bollinger was on the other side of the glass, a huge silhouette.
He was just lifting the latch.
No! Graham thought.
In the same instant that his boots touched the window ledge, he kicked
away from it.
Bollinger saw him and pulled off a shot without bothering to open the
rectangular panes. Glass sliced into the night.
Although Bollinger reacted fast, Graham was already out of his line of
fire. He swung-back to the wall seven or eight feet below Bollinger,
rappelled again, stopped at the fifteenth-story window.
He looked up and saw flame flicker briefly from the muzzle of the pistol
as Bollinger shot at Connie.
The gunfire threw her off her pace. She hit the wall with her shoulder
again. Frantic, she got her feet under her and rappelled.
Bollinger fired again.
Bollinger knew that he hadn't scored a hit on either of them.
He left the office, ran to the elevator. He switched on the control
panel and pushed the button for the tenth floor.
As the lift descended, he thought about the plan that he and Billy had
formulated yesterday.
" Yo u'll kill Harris firs t. Do what you wan t with th e woman, but be
sure to cut her up."
"I always cut them up. That was my idea in the first place."
"You should kill Harris where it'll cause the least mess, where you can
clean up after.
"Clen up? "
"When you're done with the woman, you'll go back to Harris, wipe up
every speck of blood around him, and wrap his body in a plastic tarp. So
don't kill him on a carpet where he'll leave stains. Take him into a
room with a tile floor.
Maybe a bathroom.
"Wrap him in a tarp?"
"I'll be waiting behind the Bowerton Building at ten o'clock.
You'll bring the body to me. We'll put it the car. Later, we can take
it out of the city, bury it upstate someplace.
"Bury it? Why?"
"We're going to try to make the police think that Harris has killed his
own fiancee, that he's tho Butcher. I'll disguise my voice and call
Homicide. I',U claim to be Harris, and I'll tell them I'm the Butcher.
"To mislead them?"
"You've.got it.
,"sooner or later they'll smell a trick.
"Yes, they will. Eventually. But for a few weeksg maybe even for a few
months, they'll be after Harzis There wouldn't be any chance whatsoever
that they follow a good lead, one that might bring them to us."
"A classic red herring.
"ecisely."
"It'll give us time.
"Yes."
"To do everything we want.
"Nearly everything." The plan was ruined.
The clairvoyant was too damned hard to kill.
the lift slid apart.
Bollinger tripped coming out of the elevator. The pistol flew out of his
hand, clattered against the wall.
He got to his knees and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
He said, "Billy?"
But he was alone.
Coughing, sniffling, he crawled to the pistol, clutched it in his right
hand and stood up.
He went into the dark hall, to the door of an office that would have a
view of Lexington.
Because he was worried about running out of ammunition, he used only one
shot on the door. He aimed carefully. The boom! echoed and reechoed
in the corridor. The lock was damaged, but it wouldn't release
altogether. The door rattled in its frame. Rather than use another
bullet, he put his shoulder to the panel, vressed until it gave inward.
By the time he reached the Lexington Avenue windows, Harris and the
woman had passed him. They were two floors below.
He returned to the elevator. He was going to have to go outside and
confront them when they reached the street. He pushed the button for
the ground floor.
Braced against the eighth-floor windows, they agreed to cover the final
hundred and twenty feet in two equal rappels, using the fourth-floor